Dongguan (China), May 11:
The lack of quality doubles players came back to haunt Indian badminton team as they suffered a 2-3 loss to Malaysia in their opening tie of the prestigious Sudirman Cup here today.
Saina Nehwal and women’s doubles pair of Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa won their respective matches but K Srikanth failed to breach the defence of Lee Chong Wei. The men’s and mixed doubles pairs also bite the dust as India began their campaign on a losing note here.
India, who reached the knockout stage of the biennial tournament in 2011 edition, will next take on three-time champions Korea on Wednesday.
Manu Attri and Sumeeth Reddy B started the proceedings for India but their fight ended with a 15-21 16-21 loss to Goh V Shem and Tan Wee Kiong as Malaysia drew first blood.
Olympic bronze medallist Saina then brought India back in the contest with a narrow 24-22 21-13 win over world number 56 Tee Jing Yi in a 44-minute women’s singles match.
The men’s singles contest between world number four Srikanth and two-time Olympic silver medallist Lee, who is playing his first tournament after serving a backdated eight month ban for doping, was expected to be a mouth-watering affair but it ended with the former world number one notching up a 21-16 21-15 win to hand over the lead to Malaysia once again.
Commonwealth Games silver medallists Jwala and Ashwini the took the court and the duo avenged their Glasgow final loss to Vivian Kah Mun Hoo and Woon Khe Wei with a hard-fought 21-18 19-21 21-15 win over the world number 11 pair.
However, in the decider, N Sikki Reddy and Arun Vishnu could not get it across the world number 70 pair of Chan Peng Soon and Goh Liu Ying and went down 14-21 18-21 in a 40-minute match as India went down 2-3 in the end. (PTI)
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